The whole concept of web hosting is quite interesting. When you visit a website a web page is shown. This web page is downloaded from the server where web site is hosted to your web browser. A website contains many web pages which are made up of graphic images and texts. These web pages are stored on the server and are downloaded to web browser when somebody needs to view them.
So if you intend to host a website then first thing which you must have is a web host who will be providing you the web space over the server for your website.

The host proving this hosting facility is called web hosting company or provider. Once your website is on the server then the users can access it through internet and requested pages will be downloaded to his browser on clicking on the links.
A well established host can provide hosting facility to a number of websites. ‘Hostgator’, a well known hosting provider hosts more than 4 lakh websites on its servers. For this it requires many web servers for hosting these websites.

After this these servers are connected to the internet. These servers are kept in a physical ‘data centers’. Since these data centers are needed to be functional all the time so these data centers are made fully secure with 24X7 power-backup. Proper arrangements are there to protect these from fire. These have virus detection programs and temperature control systems with proper data back-up facility. Arrangements for disaster recovery are also needed for these data canters in case of any major disaster.
Now as far a web hosting is concerned, it can be of many types- shared hosting, dedicated hosting, co-location hosting and reseller hosting. In shared hosting there are several websites which share a common space on the server. Since a server can host numerous websites people think that the performance of the server deteriorates with the increase in number of websites that are being hosted on the server, but this is totally wrong as servers are equipped with high end components to cater to such loads.
In case of dedicated hosting, a customer is provided with a specific server.

Since the server is dedicated to one customer only, he can host as many websites as he wants on that server. In case of dedicated hosting the customer has the option of changing software configuration and he can handle large site traffic. The charges for dedicated hosting quite high and can range from $50 to $500 per month depending upon the facilities provided by the company. In case on co-location hosting, the customer can also own the hardware of the web server with all the facilities of dedicated hosting. It provides more flexibility to the customer in terms of maintenance and control.
In reseller hosting a web space is offered to a party at some discounted price by the provider and this party can resell this space to some other customer in order to make profit.